Mental health issues get art focus

Outsider Insight offers workshops, peer support to emerging artists in Halifax area

Gavin Quinn, right, founded the artist collective Outsider Insight of which Artemis Tratnik, left, is a member. The group helps artists living with mental health issues join the local arts community through workshops and peer support. Tratnik recently showed her work thanks to the support of Outsider Insight and has a second showing opening Thursday at Dart Gallery, Dartmouth. (MITCH WARD)

The space in the back of Plan B Merchants Co-op on Gottingen Street recently played host to an interesting and eye-catching art show, titled Afterbirth, five years in the making.

The pieces on display may not have appealed to everyone. Many were nightmarish and a little on the gory side, but they were created with skill and finesse by a 20-year-old artist named Artemis Tratnik.

The Amherst native, whose dyed purple hair matched her boot laces, described her show as “a huge collection of everything I’ve been producing since I was 15 years old, and I’ve just been saving my personal favourites.”

“They come from my experience with mental health, and a lot of it has to do with my reaction to feelings that aren’t so nice. That has been my way of coping for as long as I can remember.”

The opportunity for Tratnik to show her work, and the themes of which she describes as “nature, body horror, and folklore,” came from her involvement with the Outsider Insight artists collective.

Outsider Insight is the eight-month-old brainchild of Gavin Quinn, who came up with the idea for an artist collective specifically for emerging artists living with mental health issues. As the project co-ordinator, he works closely with Justina Dollard, the group’s administrator, to give new members access to educational workshops, group shows, and unique gallery spaces around Halifax.

Both Dollard and Quinn strive to make the group a family for all of its members.

“At the bottom, grassroots level, it’s as simple as getting a cup of coffee and asking, ‘How are you doing?’ to taking someone to the emergency room and waiting five hours to make sure they see a doctor,” explained Quinn.

Dollard even goes so far as to bring art supplies to artists who are currently in the hospital or mental health institutions, making sure that they can still practise their craft.

More formally, they have created a workshop program, taking people through the steps of putting an art show together, pricing work, writing a biography, public speaking, framing, and financials.

Quinn constantly searches for “alternative” venues for the artists.

“We’ve got some weird ones,” said Quinn. “We’ve got a show going in a Laundromat, and one going in a sneaker store.”

Veith Street Gallery is the official home for the group and Dollard serves as the director. It is where they helped Tratnik put on her first show, and then found space in Plan B for her.

Robert Chaisson, the friendly, bespectacled owner of the shop, is supportive of all the artists who show in the back room.

“Our gallery space here is quite important, and the shows we have here are important to the shop,” said Chaisson.

“A show like (Artemis’s) is fantastic. We think it’s important to have a place where people can host their art.

“The realms of high art have their world, but there are places where people get lost along the way. They really don’t have a lot of places where they can show their work, and their work is as valid as anyone else’s.”

Tratnik has another show starting Sept. 4 at the Dart Gallery in Dartmouth.